BY MARCUS HAND IN KUALA LUMPUR

 

MALAYSIA remains confident of luring Evergreen away from Singapore despite renewed offers by PSA Corp and is factoring it into a huge leap in national container growth for this year.

 

Malaysian transport minister Dato&' Seri Ling Liong Sik told the TOC Asia Conference in Kuala Lumpur that the country expected container throughput to jump 33% to 10m teu in 2002.

 

The bullish forecast comes as industry sources indicate that PSA has made a renewed counter offer to win back Evergreen Marine which plans to shift to the port of Tanjung Pelepas from Singapore in August.

 

The new offer followed reports that Evergreen Group chairman Chang Yung-Fa said the move had already been decided on.

 

"We will do everything possible to help PTP because the initial decision by Evergreen obviously came out of a considered decision," Dr Ling told reporters following his speech.

 

He noted it was a decision not made solely on price but the other factors such as efficiency as well.

 

Quizzed later on how the massive volume growth forecast could be achieved Dr Ling made oblique reference to the earlier answer about Evergreen, saying: "A few of the things such as I mentioned earlier could add 1m or 2m teu."

 

The switch by Evergreen to PTP is expected to bring around 1.2m teu a year, a figure which could be even greater factoring in feeder volumes.

 

The growth figure, however, brought astonishment from delegates and one local port executive commented: "It is not possible."

 

Speculation has heightened to the status of the deal in recent weeks as Singapore has gone on a strong public relations offensive to say its port can still compete. An earlier counter offer made last October when Evergreen signed a memorandum of understanding with Pelepas apparently failed to sway the Taiwanese giant.

 

Further the deal between PTP and Evergreen was expected to have been concluded by the end of January but has yet to be signed.